


meet me in the fucking pit

by Rag



Series: shipstuck [2]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Universe, Communication Failure, Flashbacks, Friendship, Gen, Past Abuse, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Wrestling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-22
Updated: 2017-05-22
Packaged: 2018-11-03 13:32:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10968261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rag/pseuds/Rag
Summary: Karkat and Dave strife for the first time. It goes badly for both of them.





	meet me in the fucking pit

**Author's Note:**

> beta'd by [circumlocute](http://archiveofourown.org/users/circumlocute/pseuds/circumlocute)! ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Your name is Dave Strider, and you’re kind of losing your goddamned mind. You’ve been on this hell ship with your kind-of sister and a handful of aliens who you kind of, sort of know. One of whom you were starting to know in a more biblical sense, before she decided she’d rather get violent with a clown – but you’re actively working on not caring about that, because caring too much about something like that is hella lame and caring at all feels like too much. Terezi is her own person/troll, she can make her own decisions, and you don’t like to admit how sharply it stings that she chose to do _that_ with _him_ over you. You’re totally going to will yourself to be Zen as fuck about the whole recently-dumped-but-not debacle. All the enlightened corpses of Buddhist monks on the meteor-desiccated husk that was the planet you grew up on ain’t got nothing on you.

OK, you care a little bit. A tiny bit. Smaller than a pea but maybe denser than iridium, but you’re getting over it. And you’ve got all kinds of shit to distract yourself with on this cripplingly lonely ship, like organizing the books in the library by color and shape, because the alphabet is Trollian whagrable and while you might like to learn it someday, that would mean asking either Karkat (no) or Kanaya (fuck no) to teach you. You’ll stick to colors and shapes.

Do you wish there was more than diddly squat to do? Yes. You’re always on the lookout for more stupid nonsense to do to alleviate the crushing boredom and looming bundle of fuck no that is your feelings about Terezi, lurking in the corner of your jaded heart like a prickly cactus of a feefees goblin, whispering sweet nothings in your ear about how you are worthless and unlovable. Come on, Dave, it’d feel _so good_ to let these feelings in them and bathe in them like a gilded Hollywood suite hot tub. Uh, no, feefees goblin, it’d feel stupid, and these books need sorting. You’re finding all kinds of subtle variations in the greens and blues and mauves that make a nice gradient that you can mix and match. You are the god of these books. They can be lined up by shade or spattered in a deco-art post-modern masterpiece of clash, You control their fate.

Honestly, there isn’t much you wouldn’t do at this point. You’re bored out of your fucking skull and the feefees goblin is rapidly closing in.

The door opens, and you know it’s Karkat before he speaks, because the guy is incapable of stomping around at a volume less than dinosaur.

“Strider. Strife with me, now.”

There isn’t much you wouldn’t do, but this is pretty near the top of that list. This is literally the last thing you could possibly want to hear from anyone besides, maybe, “this session is irreparably null, also I’ve somehow become pregnant with your spawn and your life will now be nothing but taking care of grub-human hybrid monsters for the rest of eternity,” and you can’t think of many living mouths you’d be less thrilled to hear it from. Your blood is pounding in your ears but if you can get him to leave, you might just have to not think about why. You’re a professional at beating back unpleasant memories with a stick, you know how to nip this budding trip down garbage lane right in the bud.

“Busy.”

“What? No. I can see how busy you are, and it’s exactly not busy enough to warrant any kind of an excuse. What the hell are you even doing here? Do you have any idea how long it took to find you? I looked everywhere-“

God, he loves the sound of his own voice. You cut him off before he runs it farther into nowhere. “No, man, look.” You gesture to the shelves you haven’t gotten to. “This place is in shambles. It needs me. This library needs me to right the wrongs that your people have subjected it to for millennia.” Rambling about nothing out loud is nice, and maybe you’re a hypocrite for being salty when he does it, but whatever, you’re not being paid to care about that. “Seriously, did you have a hand in this? I don’t know how I can take your species seriously if this is how you upkeep your books. You talk a big game about how superior trolls are, little man,” and good lord your choice of words astounds you to the fucking heavens, what the fuck, paging Dr. Freud we have a problem – and you realize you’ve stopped talking in the middle of a sentence and Karkat looks baffled, recover. You clear your throat but your voice still cracks. “But I can’t believe it when this is how you treat your repositories of knowledge. You gotta respect that shit.”

Karkat glares at you for a moment before responding, and in that moment your heartbeat bursts through the proverbial roof of the proverbial house of your proverbial meat suit, but you decide that pausing time and getting the hell out of dodge would probably just make him more likely to ask questions you don’t want to touch with a thousand-foot pole. Give him enough of a whiff of a mystery and, like the little troll bloodhound he is, he will never stop needling you with it until he gets enough juicy deets to sate his appetite. Which you would never give him, or anyone else, never again, because you know how that goes down and you’re sick of it. No one actually cares, including you. You’re so over it all, Freudian slips be damned.

“Listen,” he says, “I’m not going to patronize you by pretending that made sense. Would you, please, for the love of everything good left in the universe, extend to me that same courtesy by admitting that you spent the last 45 seconds saying nothing?”

“First of all, that was 27 seconds tops. Second, can’t, seeing as I unloaded a goddamn wealth of human knowledge there. From one species to another, an exchange of experience and information. We almost had a moment, Karkat, but you had to go and say it was meaningless-“

He groans. “Okay! Okay, please, it doesn’t even matter, just stop. Clearly you’re all about that insufferable obfuscation life-“

“You know it.”

“-and there’s nothing I can do to change that except, maybe, get to the point. Do I dare try to use my scythe of bluntness to cut straight to the core of your multitudinous layers of bullshit? Do I dare hope that glimmer on the horizon is one of hope that you won’t just redirect the conversation into another nonsensical loophole? Dave. Please strife with me. I’m getting out of practice and I. Really don’t want to be out of practice if we need to fight.”

The glaring red panic is a little bit more than dulled to a tolerable level when he phrases it like that. Almost as if having a choice in the matter is relevant to how terrifying you find the prospect of throwing down with someone? Incredible. You’re leaning so much about yourself lately. You should write a self-help book and share all of this sick insight with the three or so surviving members of the human race.

There’s also a tone in those last few sentences, about not wanting to get out of shape, that gets your attention. There’s a story there. But judging by the look on his face, like he’s just eaten four lemons and/or stuck his face into a wet fart pie, that’s not a can of worms he’ll be all that jazzed to pop on open. But, still. You can tell this is about more than just the strifing. Especially if it’s a big enough issue that he’s coming to _you_ for help.

“Shit, why didn’t you just say that? I’m always happy to help a brother out, Karkat.” Your choice of words continues to astound you, and as soon as you agree to it you start to regret it. You kind of really want to take it back, but you won’t, you’re going to man down and do this because he’s really not wrong that you should stay on top of this. The world sucks and fighting is a thing that you’ll probably have to do a lot more in the future, and it’s probably for the best that you get over your weird baggage as soon as possible.  This line of thought is making you sick, so you redirect. Here and now, that’s what you’re focusing on, strifing with this angry flaming bag of dicks who might or might not know you just got dumped by his lifelong crush. This is a Good Idea if for no other reason than it’s too late to back out now.

“You. Are. Unbearable. Why does everything have to be a fucking debacle with you? Follow me.”

You follow him to a room where all the furniture has been pushed to the walls except a battered couch that’s turned on its side, which is sitting not too far from the center of the room.

“Have you been beating up on Mr. Couchy?”

“Don’t anthropomorphize the couch, Strider. And what if I have?”

“That’s so uncool, man. What did Mr. Couchy ever do to you? Look at him, he’s sad.”

He gives you a withering look as he drags the couch out of the arena. The image of him in here alone, beating up on a couch, is almost enough to calm you down. Thinking back on it, you really haven’t done this with another sentient being since.

Well, time to make new memories.

Karkat comes back to the center of the circle and puts his arms up and your mind goes blank.

“Tell me to stop or hit me three times in a row to tap out,” he says.

You blink a few times in rapid succession, which of course, he can’t see behind your shades. Tapping out. Fascinating. What a concept, what a fucking idea. You feel like your brain is jammed with an internal logic error. _Tapping out, does not compute, reboot._

“Dave?”

“What?”

“Did you hear me?”

“Yeah, tapping out. Got it.”

He lowers his stance. “Are you okay? You’re acting kind of-“

“No man, I’m good. I’m so ready for this, I’ve never been more ready for anything in my short life to this point, let’s go.”

Karkat looks like he doesn’t even kind of believe you, but he thinks better of arguing further.

“Okay, I guess.” He puts his arms back up and takes a step towards you.

Okay, this is happening. You keep your arms close to your core, up and close, like you were taught. _Keep your guard up, little man. Up. C’mon, is that the best you got? Up._

Focus, here and now. Karkat, chubby little troll guy, coming at you with what looks like pretty terrible sparring form. Probably fake, probably a trick to get you to let down your guard so that he can kick your legs out from under you and remind you what your blood tastes like. Nope, not falling for it. You flashstep close enough to sock him a quick jab, which he blocks with his forearm just in time. You flash back, and he blinks at the space you left behind.

“Time out,” he says, which floors you again because ??? error error what is that? “What the fuck was that?”

“What, too fast for you?” He gives you a bored look, so you cut the shit, somewhat. “It’s an ancient human technique, passed down through the generations-“

“Teach me to do it.”

“What, now?”

“No, after this.”

 “Uh. Sure, I guess.”

“Okay. Thanks.” He puts his arms back up and makes eye contact with you and gives you a little nod, really fucking broadcasting when the fighting begins and ends, and you can’t stop thinking about how different this is from every other time you’ve done this. And theoretically yeah you knew that it was fucked up what your brother was doing and you knew that treating you better than shit would have necessitated a bit more control on your part but this is really hammering all that home in a way that’s making you feel all kinds of noisy things you don’t want to think about.

You put your guard up, a little delayed. You flashstep over to him and he flinches, trips back a little bit, and he raises his arms too late to protect himself. You have an opening for a clear shot, but you don’t take it.

(because you learned better than to land them, even when you could, because the fallout was never worth it)

(he didn’t want a fair fight. he wanted to hurt you. when you managed to hurt him back it just pissed him off, it just made it worse)

Karkat doesn’t seem to notice. He recovers his ground and manages to tackle you and wow, where was he hiding that strength. Jesus, kid must eat his Wheaties for breakfast, because holy shit do you go down without much of a fight.

You try to push him off but he keeps you down without much effort. You’re trying not to panic about the fact that, now that you’re down, you can’t flashstep away. You smell his sweat and all you can think of is the stank of your brother’s sweat and the foul smell of that awful soda on his breath as he held you there and laughed in your face-

“Come on, Strider, fight back.”

_Come on, bitch. Fight back._

You try, you’re trying, you are actively struggling to get him off you, and it continues to get you nowhere fast because he’s way too strong. Your thoughts get hazy and loud and you manage to land a kick to his side. He wheezes and it’s enough that you roll out from under him and the raging swarm of hornets quiet to a hum that’s only almost deafening. And then he’s back on you again.

And the next thing you know, you’re curled up into a ball on the floor, and Karkat’s screechy voice is coming to you from a few feet away.

”-serious, you’re freaking me out. Should I get Rose?”

You sit up. You don’t know what happened, but you can’t imagine it was incredibly cool. You try to speak but nothing comes out, but you have to try to adjust because no, do not get Rose, do not pass go, do not collect $200. You give him a thumbs up.

“What the fuck does that mean? Yes? Get Rose?”

“Don’t.” Hello, voice, so nice of you to come back, tiny and weird though you may be. “Please just. Like. Keep this on the down low.”

He looks equally exasperated and concerned. “Can you please explain to me why you went catatonic in the middle of strifing?”

God. Is that what you did? Really wonderful, fantastic. You’re probably going to die of sheer humiliation alone.

“Your sick troll moves were too much for my puny human meat sphere,” you flub. “Thinkin’ I might not be all that up for strifing with you.”

Karkat seems pissed, which is really not helping with your whole “dear God, how does thinking” problem.

“Goddamit! I knew you weren’t okay with this, why did you say you were? Why did you agree to it? What the hell is wrong?”

“Nothing is wrong, literally not a single blessed thing is even approaching the vicinity of wrong.” Thinking is a monumental task and you’re aware that words are spilling out of you before you can run them through your filter. You’re hoping that years of having What Not To Say beaten into you will help you not trip over yourself too hard here.

 “You’re the worst liar.” He looks uncomfortable and you see an opening to shift the conversation away from you, and put _him_ on the defensive instead, and you lunge for it.

“Didn’t answer my question. Can’t imagine why a guy wouldn’t trust his gut in a situation like-“

“Because you _said_ it was fine!”

“Yeah?” He seems distressed, he’s getting more distressed, and you’re being a dick but you have to change the subject-

“Not good enough for you? How about because I’m a worthless piece of shit leader who got half his fucking friends _killed_ because I was a fucking useless coward! And maybe I’m so fucking pathetic that I’d rather force you to beat the shit out of me than fucking stew in my own juices for another cursed minute!”

That. Takes a bit to digest. You have no idea how to respond. A Pyrrhic victory if there ever was one. Changed the subject, yes, shot that ball through the hoop from the other side of the court. Made Karkat incredibly fucking uncomfortable and forced this wriggling can of worms open and onto the floor, also yes. And now the worms are sitting there, tangled into a disgusting writhing mass of flesh and bug and you’re both just staring at it in abject horror.

“Fuck off, pick your jaw off the floor, and shut up.”

“I didn’t say any-“

“You’re going to, and shut up. I shouldn’t have said anything. This is stupid. I don’t understand humans and it was a mistake to try.”

There’s way more in that wormy soup than you have the time or energy or ability to unpack here, but he’s clearly in a lot of pain. Like a whole fucking lot. His deflection is transparent, but like hell are you going to try to force him to talk about _that_ when he doesn’t want to.

It seems pretty clear to you what you need to do here. And you don’t really want to because of years of keeping this out of the ears of others, but maybe there’s a middle ground. Nothing too dangerous, just.

“Going blank slate in a fight isn’t a human thing. It’s, uh. More of a me thing.”

He looks up at you with an expression that seems kind of pitiful (you’re not sure if it’s human pity or troll pity, or if there’s a difference between the two, but you don’t have the wherewithal to bother unpacking that right now). You brace yourself for whatever comes next, because it’s going to be awkward, but this is the road you’ve taken.

“Uh. Do you want to, um. Talk about it?”

 “I’m offended, Karkat. At least take me out to dinner first.” He sighs and looks like he might be genuinely upset, and you feel like shit because you don’t want to be dismissive, you don’t want to make him think that asking you anything bordering on personal is a losing proposition. The idea that he wants to know is actually kind of nice, it’s just that you don’t. Want to talk about it. With anyone, now or possibly ever, because frankly you never recovered from the fact that the few people you _did_ tell, gave you back radio static or a change of subject. Maybe you just weren’t direct enough. Maybe you should have gone the full ham with it, told them all the details instead of vaguely alluding to it. But yeah, guess what you were never going to do? That. Because maybe they still would have given you back radio static or a change of subject, because it was Too Much to deal with. And if you never told them, you didn’t have to risk the pain of knowing that for a fact.

But that’s not Karkat’s fault, and you don’t want to make him feel like he shouldn’t bother being nice to you, because being nice is fucking nice.

“I mean,” you say, “maybe later. But you gotta warm me up first. Can’t tell all my secrets to everyone who asks, it’d slaughter my carefully-crafted air of mystery.”

“You’re as mysterious as the last chapter of a detective novel, but sure,” he says, but he’s more relaxed now. “Do you, uh. Can you not tell anyone what I just said, too? I really shouldn’t have word vomited that all over you.”

You make a zipper sign over your mouth. “My lips are sealed tighter than a nun’s-“

“Okay, got it, please don’t say the rest of that.” He pauses. “Thanks.”

An awkward silence falls over the room.

“I can still teach you how to flash step.”

“I’d like that, if it won’t. Hit on whatever happened back there.”

“Yeah, don’t think it will. You wanna start tomorrow? Think I’m down for the count today.”

“Yeah. Uh.” Another painful silence. “Do you want to watch a movie with me?”

“That sounds so many hundreds of times better than sitting in this room like a couple of chumps.”

As you follow him to the room he’s fashioned into a tiny home theater, because of course he has, this unbelievable nerd, you realize that you’re not just tolerating his company because there’s nothing better to do. There’s something under all the piss and vinegar that you’re actually kind of looking forward to seeing more of.

You hope that his taste in movies is at least slightly better than John’s, but even if it’s not, there are worse things you could be doing than watching them with him.

(it’s not)

(and that’s fine)

**Author's Note:**

> warning: part 3 of shipstuck is really abusive, sexually explicit gamzee/terezi
> 
> skip to davekat continuation here: http://archiveofourown.org/works/11186832/chapters/24976497


End file.
